glenn murcutt
TRANSCRIPT
Glenn Murcutt, in full Glenn Marcus Murcutt (born July 25, 1936, London, Eng.), Australian architect who was noted for designing innovative climate-sensitive private houses/environmentally sensitive design.
Murcutt was born in London while his Australian parents were en route to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His father found success as a gold prospector in New Guinea, and Murcutt spent the first five years of his life there. The family’s home was constructed of corrugated iron and set on top of stilts to keep out water and animals; the design of this house, and of other houses built by his father, would later inform many of Murcutt’s own choices as an architect of houses and other small-scale buildings. He grew up in the Morobe district of New Guinea, where he learned to value simple, primitive architecture. From his father, Murcutt learned the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau, who believed that we should live simply and in harmony with nature's laws. Murcutt's father also introduced him to the streamlined modernist architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Murcutt's early work strongly reflected Mies van der Rohe's ideals.
After earning a degree in architecture from the University of New South Wales Technical College in 1961, Murcutt spent eight years with a Sydney architectural firm before founding his own practice. In 1970 Murcutt began a nine-year stint as a design tutor at the University of Sydney. After teaching at the University of New South Wales in 1985 and at the University of Melbourne from 1989 to 1997, he embarked on a series of visiting professorships at universities in the United States, Papua New Guinea, Finland, and Denmark.
Murcutt came to feel that buildings should be able to respond to changes in conditions.
He said:
“Buildings should open and close and modify and re-modify and blinds should turn and open and close, open a little bit without complication.
They should do all these things. That is a part of architecture for me, the resolution of levels of light that we desire, the resolution of the wind that we wish for, the modification of the climate as we want it. All this makes a
building live.”
Murcutt’s buildings reflect his desire to maintain harmony with the environment. His houses often feature corrugated iron with the ribs laid horizontally, creating a linearity that he felt responded to the landscape instead of competing with it. As a result of his sense of a building’s functionality, few of his designs called for air-conditioning. The flow of air was controlled through the implementation of slatted roofs, screens, and blinds; wide eaves provided shelter from the sun.
Motto: Touch the earth lightly Honors and Awards: 1992: Alvar Aalto Medal 1992: Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal 2002: Pritzker Prize 2009: American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
DesignsMurcutt chooses materials that can be produced easily and economically: Glass, stone, brick, concrete, and corrugated metal. He pays close attention to the movement of the sun, moon, and seasons, and designs his buildings to harmonize with the movement of light and wind.Many of Murcutt's buildings are not air conditioned.
2015 Glenn Murcutt Master ClassThe Glenn Murcutt Architecture Master Class in Australia has become an major annual event on the international architecture calendar. Started in 2001, architects and senior students from over 70 nations around the world have now traveled to Australia to participate in the two-week residential studio based program. The intensive two-week design studio program involves a design project undertaken in groups and culminating, at the end of week two, with a design presentation by participants and a critique by Glenn Murcutt and the other tutors.
GLEN MURCUTT PROJECTS
‘Riversdale’ – Arthur & Yvonne Boyd Centre
Sited between eucalypt forest and cultivated farming land, in the lee of a hill which protects it from cold winds off Mount Kosciusko.
The distinguished Australian artist Arthur Boyd and his partner Yvonne donated this land in the Shoalhaven River valley for use by their Education foundation.
It provides a large meeting hall with kitchen, bathing facilities and shared accommodation for up to thirty two students.
The sleeping areas are treated as a linear arrangement, each accommodating four people.
each sleeping bay forms a window framing a personal view of the landscape. Fixed glazing is positioned below timber panels which pivot open or can be adjusted for screened ventilation.
Painted plywood blades externally bracket each bed, and provide privacy. The larger blades accommodate a sliding door which can divide each room into two.
Walsh House Walsh House stands
on open grassland, with its principal façade addressing a forested ridge to its north, and with its long axis directed precisely towards a large knoll of rock in the distance, to its east.
, the roof projects deeply to shield the upper, north-facing windows from direct summer sun, allowing these windows to be unscreened, and to frame the view of the ridge clearly throughout the year.
as a series of connected rooms, each clearly identified from the outside by an individual glazed bay, protected by adjustable louvres, which allows the user to individually adjust the daylighting of their room. Each bay is intended for variable use, as for example a day-bed, writing desk, or small greenhouse.
The house presents four very different faces. Its southern and western elevations, facing the cold south-western winds of winter, have the character of a working farmhouse, crafted in rustic materials, with a few windows. The northern and eastern façades are of far more refined materials and detailing, and are more open to the luxuriant surrounding view.
Marie Short / Glenn Murcutt House the Marie Short House was designed
in the 1970s, later purchased and altered by Murcutt in 1980. The 1974-75 house plan is disarmingly simple with two almost identical pavilions, rotated and slipped; one for sleeping, the other for living. Each pavilion is six, structural timber bays, the last two bays treated as an open entry porch. Between the two, a thickened wall implies an external corridor which links the porches and accommodates the collection of rain water. The strategy to repeat and distinguish the pavilions by function is extended to the kitchen and bathrooms where each functional component is individuated, repeated and grouped as a cluster of cells. The spatial contrast between the service and living zones heightens a sense of generosity in the larger rooms.
The orientation of the house and its articulation are conceived in relation to climatic considerations. The living pavilion faces north to receive sun for the majority of the day. Retractable metal louvers control levels of light and privacy and the glass louvers allow varying degrees of ventilation. This double layered system gives a high degree of personal freedom to orchestrate the building as an instrument, for both environmental comfort and aesthetic experience of the landscape.
Climatic performance also drives the detailed resolution of the roof. Curved corrugated metal sheets overlap to provide horizontal ventilation slots. Doubling the layers calls attention to the immaterial edge and renders the building as a horizontal volume. This abstract treatment of the pitched roof form reinforces the conception of the house as a floating platform.
The 1974-75 house was conceived in terms of existing timber, stockpiled by the client. An expressed post and beam structure draws on farm shed construction techniques. The assembly system and junction details were developed in order to accommodate the client’s wish to pull apart and reassemble the components for future relocation of the house.
In this House Murcutt offers a centred enclosure as well as the spatial repetition and extrusion of a machine. The abstract and original re-presentation of familiar forms such as the pitched roof and entrance porch using local techniques and materials assigns the building an important position within the pursuit and evolution of modernist architecture in Australia.
Magney House Situated on the southern coast of NSW,
the site is a spectacular landscape between the ocean and western mountains with a nearby lake to the north. It is exposed, windswept and rugged. The clients had owned the land for many years using it for camping holidays and were interested in a house with tent like qualities.
The building is a single pavilion divided by a central court and can operate as two self contained suites, one for the parents, the other for guests or family. Living areas open onto the shared court and a connection is implied between these adjacent spaces. The separate proposed garage bay in the plan illustrated was never realised.
The striking roof form also registers the architect,s development of a pavilion type with a distinct front and back and this dominant spatial orientation is primarily developed in relation to climatic considerations. The open northern face is treated as a glazed sliding screen with individually adjustable and retractable external louvres. The large angled roof overhang shades the building from summer sun and allows winter sun access. In sharp contrast, the lower rear wall facing the predominant southerly winds is largely closed and is constructed of reverse brick veneer. Continuous upper fixed glazing along the southern façade admits light and sky views. These glass panels slope away from the wall to accommodate continuous adjustable horizontal vents at door head height.
The climatic and formal ambitions of the building are evident in the development and material resolution of the structural system. The design of the tubular steel frame refines experiments from previous buildings and achieves an extremely light skeleton. This material reduction is visible in the fine edge of the northern roof overhang where the metal skin acts with the tensile steel struts and eliminates additional supporting members. The improbably thin roof is symbolic of a house which feels unexpectedly light, almost transportable.
Marika-Alderton House Commissioned by the aboriginal leader
Banduk Marika and her partner Mark Alderton this project is in Yirrkala on land associated with the Marika clan. The project presented a rare opportunity to design a house in Australia’s extreme north and to architecturally address the inherent climatic and cultural conditions. Facing the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria the site has a tropical climate with cyclonic conditions, high winds and very heavy rainfall. Surrounded by a beach, estuary creek and freshwater lagoon, the building is slightly removed from a generally suburban settlement.
Living room, bedroom, bathroom
It was conceived by Murcutt as a prototype and as a viable alternative to the house then occupied by the clients, a brick building with small windows typical of aboriginal public housing in this context. Prefabricated in Gosford, north of Sydney, all components were packed in two shipping containers and transported to site via semi-trailer and barge. The house was bolted and screwed together on site, the entire process taking four months.
The building is elemental. A pitched roof, dry timber platform and operable skin float in relation to each other. The structural system is comprised of a steel frame and Australian hardwoods. The fine sheet metal roof is dominant, deep eaves protecting the interior from summer sun. The exterior wall is treated as finely crafted infill panels with no glazed openings. These typically plywood and slatted timber screens slide or pivot open allowing prevailing breezes to naturally cool the house.
One of the most striking aspects of the architecture is the southern façade, where vertical plywood blades of varying depths project out from the steel column line. These register the dimensions of different built-in furniture elements; a kitchen bench, timber joinery or beds, framed as floating window bays. The fins provide both visual privacy and shade from the summer sun in early morning and late afternoon. Voids under the bay structures confirm the sense of suspension above a horizontal floor plane.
The Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt is not a builder of skyscrapers. He doesn't design grand, showy structures or use flashy, luxurious materials. Instead, Australian architect Glenn Murcutt pours his creativity into smaller projects that let him work alone and design economical buildings that will conserve energy and blend with the environment. All of his buildings (mostly rural houses) are in Australia.
TUAZON